


Spiral

by Unforgotten



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sharing a Bed, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:22:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten
Summary: A few years after the Snap, Bucky and Loki go undercover as the Winter Soldier and, well, Loki.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Loki
Comments: 8
Kudos: 81
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Spiral

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



"Your many-headed beast doesn't possess a base somewhere cooler?" shouted Loki, errant king of Asgard. "Or drier?"

Despite the heat and humidity, the numerous insects, and his own new armor, his companion didn't seem to be melting, as Loki had been since the drop-off of a few minutes before. He appeared to be more or less thriving, in fact. Loki would have resented it a great deal more had Barnes been any less of a pleasure to look upon. "It's that way, I think!"

"You _think_?"

"Come on, let's go!" As the aircraft they'd swung down from retreated farther, thus dulling its roar, Barnes' voice lowered in its turn. "And try not to get too far ahead unless you want to lose me in that get-up."

It was, Loki had to admit, not the most unlikely of concerns. The green and black armor that had once set him apart in New York would serve to make him blend into this forest of vine and shadow. In other circumstances, it might have appealed to him, as someone who had once spent several centuries learning how not to be seen by eyes he wished to avoid. In the current itchy, sticky one, he spent the walking portion of their miles-long trek wishing he hadn't been so quick to sell Barnes on this particular mission, no matter how hilarious its prospects.

As for the climbing portion of the journey, Loki used that time to inquire if Barnes was really certain about this undertaking, after all. If he were having second thoughts, that would be more than understandable. It wasn't too late to rethink the mission altogether, if that's what he would prefer. Loki would, of course, prefer to forge onward, but he was as willing as ever to defer to Barnes' comfort, should he need--

"Can it," Barnes said. "It's not exactly my idea of a good time, but I'll make it. So will you, when we get to the air conditioning." A few steps later, he added, "Almost there."

Loki paused. Looked. Listened. There was nothing to see, for the most recent tangle of underbrush they'd clawed their way through had only been replaced by the next, but now that Barnes had alerted him, he could hear it above (or perhaps below) the cloud of insects buzzing around them. It was a low, humming vibration, unmistakable to anyone who'd grown up the company Loki had.

They traveled perhaps two hundred feet more before they came to the fence. One moment, it might still have been an untold number of steps away. The next, it was before them, so close Loki had to stop in his tracks, lest he find himself on the receiving end of an unpleasant shock for the thousandth time in his life (which would also have been the first in three years and counting). Barnes stopped as suddenly behind him, so close that anyone with lesser reflexes would have barreled on. For a moment, Loki felt his radiant warmth against his back and his breath against his neck, neither nearly as stifling as it should have been in that heat.

Then Barnes took a step back, and all the unpleasant sensations of the Amazon filled the place where he had been. Together, they surveyed the barrier before them. The jungle came up to the fence on either side, so they could see no more than a few feet in any direction, nor inside the fence whatsoever. There was no telling from here where the gate would be, and so there was nothing for it but to choose a direction.

They must always have been destined to choose the wrong one, for it took another few hours and they'd gone around three corners by the time they came to the forest's end where the hundred yards to either side of the dirt path leading to the gate had been completely cleared.

"They couldn't have set us down nearer the road?" Loki groused.

"Only if we wanted to get shot five miles back," Barnes pointed out, mildly as ever. He might even have had a point, not that Loki would ever have admitted it. "They won't be expecting anyone from this direction. You might actually be able to get a word in before they shoot us."

"I'm sure that's what the spider wishes us to believe."

Rather than lean into the argument, far from the first Loki had attempted to provoke over whether the remaining Avengers were spiteful toward them (they were), and if so to what extent (every mission made it even more obvious they, and especially he, were considered expendable), Barnes said, "Better get into character."

It did seem to be that time. Loki hadn't expected to need a change of costume, but also hadn't expected to droop to the extent he had. Even his horns must have been wilting by now. Rather than expend the magical energy necessary to replace it all on what might be the eve of battle, he cast a spell of cleansing, instead. More time-consuming than the other thing, but ultimately less work than the third option, which would have been to create and maintain an illusion for an unknown length of time

By the time Loki had finished, Barnes had cast his own illusion, of a sort. He was no longer Barnes, wry and kind, slow to commit to battle but gloriously lethal when he so bestirred himself. He was someone and something else. A creature Loki had heard of, wondered about, never before thought to see. Blank-faced. Sullen. Possessed of the dangerous aura Barnes himself seemed to go out of his way to reject. It was an entirely new aspect, and Loki found himself staring for a moment longer than he would have dared had Barnes been more Barnes-like, and thus more able and likely to comment.

"Well, then," he managed finally. "In we go."

And so they went, sweeping into the open, Loki leading, Barnes following. They were nearly to the gate when a voice barked, "Stop where you are!"

From inside the fence swarmed a handful of soldiers, each holding a weapon. In other circumstances, they would not have stood the slightest chance against the storm that had appeared before them. In these circumstances, they had a mission, Barnes and he, and it had taken only the slightest glance at the weapons to know they were not what they'd come for. And so Loki placed his hands above his head.

"Put your hands in the air!" shouted the officer at the head of the others, somewhat belatedly. He had a young face and a trembling voice, and was not looking at Loki.

Loki glanced toward Barnes. He still stood there, hands by his side, lethal and unmoving.

Ah, yes. Handlers, orders. The most delicious part of this would now begin.

"Hands up," Loki said.

Despite the fact that they'd planned this in advance, there was something truly gratifying about seeing Barnes obey his command without question or hesitation.

"Who are you!" the commanding officer shouted, as his men surrounded the two of them, and began to search them for weaponry. "What are you doing here!"

"I come in peace and the hope of chaos," said Loki, a lie that only barely counted as such. "I am Loki of Asgard. I wish to join with Hydra. As proof of my good intentions, I've brought back something your organization once...misplaced." He'd expected a reaction to this, but perhaps it was too subtle a suggestion for men whose minds had clearly been affected by the heat, and had most likely been dullards even before then. (After all, what did it matter how many heads you possessed, if every time you raised one, someone struck it off?) In the end he was obliged to add, much more pointedly, "I am returning to you the Winter Soldier."

*

Half an hour later, they were deposited into an empty cell without explanation--though it was clear to Loki the young serpent's head intended to call a slightly less idiotic head to ask what to do with his 'prisoners.'

It was also clear they were being observed, as there was a poorly-concealed camera in the ceiling. Convenient. They had a fiction to sell. There was nothing like appearing to believe oneself unobserved to make others believe one was performing a truth, instead.

Reaching for his magic, Loki called a staff into being, and into his hands. It was not quite a replica of the Sceptre, for reasons ranging from not wishing to make the many heads too covetous, to not giving them a new courage were they to discover in the midst of some conflict that this particular stick was nothing more.

Loki pointed it at Barnes, who was standing just as motionless here as he had been outside. He cast an illusion on the stick, causing it to glow greenly for a moment. Then he said, "Go stand in that corner."

Barnes did.

"No, no. I told you to go stand in the other corner. Don't you listen?"

Barnes went to stand where Loki had indicated.

"No. I meant the opposite one. Hurry up now, lest you displease me."

This went on for some fifteen or twenty minutes, Loki being certain to smile meanly and chuckle often, as if he experienced no greater pleasure than needling his own perfectly obedient assassin. (It actually was incredibly amusing to nettle Barnes when he was not in a position to break character.) Finally, when he judged them to be long past the point when any watchers would surely have come to the conclusion that no uncorralled mind would have failed to snap by now, he said, in a lazy tone, "That will suit, I suppose. Now: do you recall your other instructions?"

"Yes, master," Barnes said in a monotone. No stress on either word. No pause before the latter. It could not possibly have read as sarcasm to anyone else, but Loki knew.

Nevertheless, he chose to remain magnanimous, and continued laying down the sentiment that was to be Barnes' greatest protection in this endeavor. "You remember what you're to do, should anyone other than myself attempt to command you?"

"I remember," Barnes said.

"Good."

He'd considered a speech. Woe betide any person who attempted to interfere with his Soldier, and so on. But sometimes, subtle was better. Sometimes, it was better to let people wonder. Besides which, the speech Loki had considered the likeliest had caused Barnes to laugh so uproariously that a repeat would almost certainly endanger the integrity of their mission. Why waste quality material on a person who still failed to appreciate good theater? 

Loki returned the staff to nothingness and stretched out upon the cell's single cot, his head pillowed on his hands. He sneered at Barnes for a moment, as if imagining all the chaos he might cause with him, the lives they might unravel together. In truth, though he looked forward to the coming mischief, this was also another opportunity to look at him without fearing that the mere act of looking for more than a moment or two would somehow allow even a fraction of his regard to slip past.

Then, lazily, he said, "Go stand in the other corner."

*

Some uncounted number of corners later, when the head captor had returned, white-faced and very nearly deferential, to say they were to be taken to other quarters pending the arrival of his superiors, Loki said, "The Asset remains with me." He said it in the same sort of casually venomous tone he'd once used with the palace servants. It was meant to brook no argument from those who were beneath him, and it brooked none here.

A few minutes later, he and Barnes were in their new quarters, alone save for a bed and a cheap dresser and desk.

Truly alone? Loki had spotted the camera in the cell readily enough, but there were subtler ways to hide surveillance, and Barnes was by far the better at spotting such.

"Search the room," he said, leaving back personal comments in case there was a microphone to be found here.

Barnes searched, checking every cranny, reaching beneath every surface. In the meantime, Loki performed a casting on the door and the window, ensuring none could enter until he allowed it.

When Barnes spoke, it was lightly, a world's difference from the way he'd spoken as the Soldier. "No cameras, no mikes. We should be good for tonight."

"Excellent."

"Don't know about you, but I'm going to go ahead and get some shut-eye."

That didn't surprise Loki, though the lack of commentary on what Barnes would ordinarily have referred to as 'your bullshit' certainly did. "You should. You've barely slept, of late."

"And you've gotten really great at minding your own business."

"You've seemed tired. I merely noticed," said Loki, in a tone meant to indicate that he was on the correct side of the line between being aware of the goings-on around him, and being obsessed with Barnes' doings. "I believe I shall attempt a night's sleep, as well."

He was not actually the least bit tired--but he had noticed the size of the bed, which was very much on the small side for two. Loki had shared many beds, growing up with Thor. Someone always got kicked out. Back then, that someone had nearly always been him. It wouldn't be this time; before Barnes could object, Loki had slithered out of his boots and armor, and slid under the covers against the wall, thus securing his place.

Though Loki had been looking forward to annoying him, Barnes didn't seem to have noticed the meaning behind this tactic. He removed his armor more slowly than Loki had--not precisely a show, given how distant and thoughtful he appeared, not to mention how many of his clothes remained on, but taking enough time about it for Loki to clearly envision what such a thing might look like were it ever to transpire--then climbed in beside him. For a moment, the bedframe creaked with the addition. He was as close as he'd been for that brief moment outside the fence. Then he was closer, the length of his body pressing against Loki's as he settled in.

"...You could attempt to have more respect for my person," Loki said, after a moment spent girding himself so that his voice would not give away the sudden warmth spreading from his groin out through every limb.

"What, because you ever have any for mine?" said Barnes, already sounding sleepy. "Gets cold here at night, anyway. You'll thank me later."

"I suppose," Loki said, twisting his lower half around so that his inevitable erection would do something other than poke his unwitting companion.

Before long, Barnes had fallen asleep, and, for the first time in perhaps a week, slept through the night. Loki knew this for a certainty, not because he was listening for every time Barnes paced past his door when he ought to have been sleeping, but because he slept not at all in his turn. If he'd been thrice as sleep-deprived as Barnes, still he couldn't have. Instead he lay there in a glorious agony, listening to Barnes' light snoring, lighting up again with every shift of Barnes' body, unable to so much as reach for his cock lest it cause Barnes to wake.

*

They were greeted the next morning by a hard-eyed general, to the baby head from yesterday what branches on the world tree are to mortal twigs. The interrogation that followed was when their mission began in its earnest. All questions were directed at Loki, Barnes dismissed in the same way a loaded weapon might have been: a potential for concern, were he to be drawn, but an irrelevance otherwise.

A born liar, with a story to tell and no-one to elbow him when he tried to embellish, Loki enjoyed this mightily.

"We might have a use for you," the general said, when he was satisfied, or close enough. "You're restricted to your quarters until otherwise noted. You and the Asset both. My men have orders to shoot on sight if you're seen anywhere else."

"Understood," Loki said, amused without bothering to hide his amusement, which was sure to raise uneasiness in any Midgardian who knew him only from his past appearance as a conqueror.

When they returned to their room, Barnes found no less than three hidden microphones. It hardly mattered, since they were there for only an hour before their first summons.

*

Their first few missions were small, things that couldn't have made a difference. Tests, Loki was certain, less about retrieving these trifling objects and intelligences than they were about testing their (his) obedience.

Though they were permitted no opportunity to speak unsurveilled, Barnes had thought this might happen, and Loki had thus been well-briefed ahead of time. He'd claimed to have failed something like half these tests in his past life, closer to two-thirds depending on the decade and how many of his memories he'd retained at the time. This time, the two of them sailed through all their tests together. Nothing could lower guard like an unquestioned and consistent obedience--and so it was weeks, not the expected months, before they began to be sent on assassinations.

"Stop your sniveling," Loki said to a young woman they'd been told to slay as a message to her father. She cowered feet away from her prone likeness, which was not an illusion but a construct, meant to withstand whatever inquiry might come when Loki was no longer here to maintain it. "Now, you must leave this dwelling by the rear entrance. Stay in the shadows until you reach the forest. Then, remain on the trail until you're found by a nasty red-headed woman. Go with her, and you'll be safe."

"Isn't that quieter," Loki said to a middle-aged man who had skipped the sniveling in favor of screaming, and who had just had his voice abruptly confiscated as a result. "You're to go out the side door, and turn right after five blocks. Then you're to walk three more blocks, then turn left. After that, you may walk in whatever direction pleases you, as long as you remain headed away from this house. You will find your voice returned to you fifteen minutes from this moment. Should you use it appropriately, our associate will meet you and take you to a safe house. Otherwise, you may expect to die the heinous death we did not give you."

"Attempt to stab me _one more time_ ," Loki said to a young, stubborn-jawed boy, whose sibling kept saying, 'Maybe we should listen to them...' Because of all the unnecessary dramatics, this particular mission was a closer thing than any earlier one; they'd barely ushered both boys out of the house when their (Loki's) handler arrived unexpectedly early to see their work. These constructs, hastily called, were perhaps not as convincing as the usual--though, Loki told himself, they surely weren't lacking enough for anyone else to take note.

Still, when they received word that night that they were to return to the jungle base, Loki did wonder. As ever, their cover did not allow him to inquire as to what Barnes thought, and there was no one else he could ask.

*

"Search the room," Loki said, when they were back in their quarters at the base--perhaps the same room they'd been in that first night, perhaps another, but certainly more comfortable than any of their other lodgings over the past few weeks.

Bucky did, quietly. When he was finished, no less than seven tiny devices lay in his metal palm. His eyes asked a question his mouth dared not. Loki, who had at some nebulous point grown weary indeed of ordering about a person who could not so much as object, nodded. Barnes closed his fist, crushing them all in a moment.

"Not sure that was the best idea," Barnes said. "But we need to catch up anyway."

"Yes," Loki said, finding himself content to talk little, at least as long as Barnes had things to say.

"You pick up anything about where they're keeping the guns?"

"None," Loki said, though he'd been asking veiled questions whenever the chance arose. No one had batted an eye at his repeated mentions of the Tesseract, but neither had anyone given veiled answers related to its children or where they might have been hidden. "You?"

"Nope." Barnes seemed to deflate. "You been passing on the other stuff?"

"I have." Not that there'd been much to pass on other than the names, locations, and descriptions of their would-be targets. Still, whenever he'd called in a report, Loki had been sure to give the spider any snippet that might have been something.

"Okay." Barnes sat down on the bed and gazed at his hands for a moment, before adding, "You think we've been made?"

Loki had wondered the same himself. Still, he said, "Certainly not."

"Okay. I'm going to bed."

Loki, who'd been prepared for an extended conversation in which Barnes criticized every aspect of his performance, particularly his bedside manner with their targets, could hardly believe it. Now that they had the chance to talk again, Barnes would really rather _sleep_? After all these weeks, he had nothing to say? Desired to hear none of Loki's thoughts or opinions? Had he been so completely satisfied with their interactions when they'd been able to say nothing to each other that he thought there was nothing lacking here?

"--Of course," he said, already beginning to come up with pretexts for stabbing the Winter Soldier in the gut on some future mission.

"You coming?" Barnes asked.

"If you wish," Loki said stiffly, and undressed and climbed into the bed, telling himself all the while that he was not yearning for reassurance, nor bristling in every moment it did not come.

They'd had separate sleeping rolls in the field, and thus hadn't slept so closely since that first night. Now, Loki once again found himself pressed between Barnes' heat and the wall. The arousal was slow to come this time, but eventually won the battle against every other thing that currently raged within him.

This time, however, he did manage to sleep, spiraling downward in a haze made equally of lust and spite.

*

Ever since the day Thanos had come aboard the _Statesman_ , Loki had begun to dream again, as he hadn't dreamed in years. Dreams of falling. Dreams of waking to discover his hands were blue, and that no spell nor even the aid of Gungnir itself could change him back.

But the worst dream, and the only one that had been new in the days following the battle of Wakanda, began with him once more being led before Odin in chains. In the dream, he knew everything that would come--yet when he spoke his warnings, none believed him. Frigga's death, and Odin's; Hela's coming, Asgard in ruin; Thor...they all stood there, disbelieving, until his voice grew hoarse from asking, from begging them to listen to him. Then, when there was nothing left for him to say, and he had still no proof to offer, they began to dissolve before his eyes. The king and queen and their courtiers, the palace and Asgard beyond it, all rendered to a dust that blew away from Loki's desperate grasp.

In the end, all who were left in the grayness were Loki and one other. The golden prince, the hated beloved brother-not-brother. Yet no matter what Loki said or did, no matter how desperately he threatened, flattered, implored him, in the end Thor dissolved as well, his features twisted into distrust and blame, as if this were all of Loki's doing--

And then Thanos's hand was around his throat again, as it had been for those few terrifying moments in reality, and Loki thought that perhaps everything that had come afterward had been the true dream; that he'd never extricated himself at all, never accompanied Thor to Earth, that he was still there, still dying, and his brother might still be--

He never quite finished dying. He didn't in this instance, either. Instead, he jerked awake in the dark, lay stiff with terror for a long minute as he recalled where he was, and when in time; what had transpired between now and then, and even who it was who lay beside him, making such strange noises.

Barnes wasn't snoring this time. Instead, he was making little whimpers and cries, with the occasional ' _No!_ '

For a moment, the spite of hours before made Loki consider leaving him to it. The problem with this was that he would then be forced to hear it for as long as Barnes himself dreamed.

"Barnes," Loki hissed, slapping at his shoulder. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the left. He shook his hand until it ceased to pain him, then reached and shook Barnes by his metal shoulder instead. "Barnes. You're dreaming. Wake up."

One moment, Barnes was still sleeping, still muttering and whimpering in odd contrast to the quiet that had marked all of their nights in the field. The next moment, Loki found himself slammed into the mattress, Barnes' left arm pressed against his windpipe. Above him loomed a shadow with its fist raised. For a moment, choking in life just as he had been choking in memory a moment before, Loki was certain that this, in fact, was to be his end.

But before the fist could descend, the shadow froze. "What's going--Loki?" The pressure on Loki's throat was relieved as Barnes removed his other arm from his throat. "Shit. Sorry. Shit. You okay?"

"Fine," Loki croaked. Distantly, he found himself thinking he was going to have to commit to several stabbings to make up for Barnes' transgressions tonight; but, surprisingly, the foremost thought in his mind was of something else. He could hardly help but feel Barnes' weight on top of him, could hardly help hearing how harshly he was breathing. If it was due to a nightmare rather than something more pleasant, well, one could always imagine things were different, here in the dark. 

There had been times in Loki's life when he'd seen his chance to have something he'd wanted, and damn the consequences. Here was another. Did it really matter how badly it had gone the last time?

Barnes shifted. He'd lift himself away in a moment. The chance would have passed.

No, Loki decided. It didn't matter. Shifting upward, he pressed his mouth to Barnes', grabbing the back of his head to keep him in place. Barnes stilled, his lips unmoving against Loki's, and for a moment Loki thought it might have mattered after all. That of all the mistakes of his life, this would merely be the latest.

Then Barnes seemed to let go of something, more a breath out than a sigh. His body relaxed atop Loki's, and he kissed him back in the dark. Their mouths clashed for a long while, Loki's hands moving from the back of Barnes' head to his neck, then up again to tug on his long, loose hair. Barnes responded by pulling away from Loki's mouth, just far enough to kiss and suck on his neck. When Loki let go his hair, his lips returned to where they had been before, a kiss softer than the previous one, and perhaps more questioning.

If there was in fact a question, Loki was spared fumbling the answer by the realization that Barnes had grown hard against his thigh. Somehow, as darkly as his arousal had blazed before he slept and dreamed, it was only now that Loki became fully aware of it, as it struck him with a trembling intensity. There was nothing for it but to flip Barnes onto his back and take contro--

They fell off the bed, Barnes thudding onto his back, Loki landing on top of him.

"Oops," Barnes said, in a low, breathless voice unlike any Loki had heard from him before.

"That went as I intended," Loki said. "More or less."

He kissed Barnes again, just to be certain he'd be kissed in return.

"Sure. But was it more or was it less?" Barnes asked, when the kiss had ended, and Loki was divesting himself of his shirt.

He'd planned to divest Barnes of the same, but it seemed a distraction was in order. Instead, he reached for the front of Barnes' trousers.

"Entirely," he said a moment later, and, before Barnes could question him further, took him into his mouth in the dark.

In all his fantasies of this act, he'd always been able to see the look on Barnes' face as he went down on him. Now all he could see was his shadow, but he could hear and feel everything else. Barnes' breathing, as harsh as it had been after his nightmare, then harsher than that, punctuated with the occasional low groan, each of these cut off quickly lest they be heard; the muscles in his thighs tensing between Loki's hands; and best of all, his cock in Loki's mouth and down his throat, slick with Loki's own spit, a taste Loki had desired to know for years.

"Don't stop," Barnes said, as if he thought Loki might.

For a moment, Loki actually considered it. It would have been a more fitting punishment than stabbing for the crime of having ignored him. But it would have deprived him of something he wanted, as well. Besides, though they'd never fucked before, Barnes sounded somehow more himself than he had since this idiotic mission began. Instead, Loki threw himself into it with even greater vigor, until Barnes' breathing was even more labored, his flesh hand entangled in Loki's hair as the other gripped his shoulder tightly enough it would most certainly leave a bruise in the morning.

"Fuck, Loki," he said, and spilled into Loki's mouth.

A thousand fantasies of how slowly and teasingly he'd get around to fucking Barnes after pleasuring him--they all fell away in the wake of that sound, the one that was Barnes saying his name.

"Turn over," Loki said, already working to free his cock. His eagerness made him clumsy, and it took several attempts to manage the slicking spell. By the time he was readied, Barnes had turned over. He was on his knees instead of his belly; and when Loki reached for his hips, he found them bare. The ease of access was even better than the anticipation of creating the access for himself had been, leaving nothing but to steady Barnes with one hand, his own dripping cock with the other, and find the place where he was meant to enter Barnes. And then--and then--

Barnes was hot and gloriously tight around him, and Loki, who had never before forgotten himself with any lover, lost himself entirely. He fucked into Barnes like a man possessed, not sure what he wanted to--where he wanted to--

He clutched at Barnes' hips one moment. Stroked a hand over the muscle and sinew of his back in the next. All the while, something was building. He found Barnes' hair again, pulled back his head, then let his hair go again. He reached between Barnes' legs to fondle his balls and his spent, softening cock. He didn't know what part of Barnes he most wanted to grasp, and so he grasped for every part he could reach. Desperate, as if the right handhold might somehow prevent the fall.

Then Barnes, who was bearing his weight on his left arm, reached back for Loki with his right hand, stroked down his arm until he found what he had evidently been seeking. Their fingers, entwined in the fiercest grip, was not what Loki had wanted, could not have been all he had wanted--and yet it was no more than a moment later when he came to the edge. He balanced upon it for an endless moment, and then fell after all. He pressed as deeply inside Barnes' body as he could, gasped he knew not what sentiment as he plummeted to his conclusion.

Afterward, they lay together back in the bed. It should have been delicious, Barnes' bare skin against his own--but although Barnes slept peaceably beside him, Loki once again found he could not. What should have been his greatest triumph, his cleverest theft, felt as if it must have been nothing more than another terrible error.

*

Loki woke to the sound of someone pounding on the door, Barnes poking him in the shoulder with a metal finger in order to rouse him. It could not have been two hours since their coupling, nor could Loki himself have slept for more than a few minutes. None of this would have mattered very greatly, if not that the sense of error from hours before had expanded into something greater and blacker, a doom that now dwelt in Loki's chest, whispering of unspecified horrors to come.

"Why don't you answer it, if you care so greatly," Loki snarled--and regretted it at once, as Barnes' face dissolved into the blank expression he had come to loathe over the past few weeks. "Never mind. I'll do it."

On the way to the door, he pulled on his trousers, and, once he was there, cast an illusion to make it appear he had on his armor as well. He opened it, and said, "What. Do you want."

The runner at the door spoke, and while Loki caught little of the specifics, it was clear they were being summoned somewhere. "We'll be there at our convenience," he said, and shut the door again.

When he glanced back at Barnes, and found that the expression of the Soldier had left him and been replaced by a strange, somehow even more irritating query.

Before Barnes could say whatever he was thinking of saying, Loki said, "Did you hear what he wanted?"

"They want us down at ops," Barnes said. "Are you okay?"

"I am nothing less than splendid," Loki said. "As ever. Did he say anything else?"

"No. But this doesn't feel right. I'm really starting to think we might've been made."

Loki thought back to the poorly made constructs of yesterday, the bugs Barnes had crushed in his metal hand. He saw precisely what Barnes saw, found that he resented it, and, in resenting it, dismissed it as no more than the paranoia of someone who was less than happy with his current part.

He retrieved his undershirt from the floor. "We have not been made."

"I've got a bad feeling. Maybe we should call in backup."

Loki, who the day before would have rejoiced at such a suggestion, as calling in backup ever indicated they would soon be leaving the current mission behind, found himself bristling, and could not have said why. "We're not finished. We haven't come anywhere near the desired intelligence."

"Yeah, and that's why I'm thinking maybe we should cut our losses," Barnes said, much too carefully, where in former days he would have told Loki he was an asshole and needed to listen to him before he got them both killed. "That goes double if we've been made."

"We have not been made," Loki said again. "Now, when did they want us?"

"Sounded like pretty much now."

"Then we shall be forced to table this discussion," Loki said, and swept toward the door before Barnes could do anything particularly insolent, such as call for backup anyway. "It's past time you got back into character, don't you think?"

*

When they arrived at their destination, it was immediately evident that Barnes might have had a point. The first clue of this was that the room was filled with soldiers, at least twenty of them, each holding a weapon. Each of these radiated with an energy as well-known to Loki as any other; each had been, without a doubt, forged from the power of the Tesseract.

But there was no time to do anything about that, for in the next moment Loki noticed the hostages. Twenty-some of them, on their knees with their hands behind their backs, an expression of terror on each of their faces. And, on the floor before him, were the poorly-formed constructs from the day before, the ones that even at the time had seemed lesser than the previous ones. After less than a day, they were already dissolving into further vagueness, in a way human corpses simply didn't.

"Ah," Loki said, scrambling for a way to spin this. "I'm afraid I may have taken liberties with my instructions. You see, I was told, 'dispose of the target.' No one ever specified how this was to be done. While I'd had the Asset kill the first few, it had grown rather boring for me. I had no reason to believe transforming the targets into these forms would cause offense."

"Good," said the leader, the same man who'd interrogated Loki on that second day. "Then you won't have any problem disposing of these targets, either."

Loki tried to think. Tried to think quickly. It should not have been so difficult, his mind flitting from one possibility to the next too quickly to land on any one. There was no reason the hostages in front of them should have appeared, for even a moment, to be familiar faces, ones he'd passed frequently in the hall on the way to one Security Council meeting or another.

They needed a plan, and it was he who must arrive upon one. He had only to find a way to keep the hostages alive, while these men all believed them to be dead, while maintaining their cover, while also taking at least the first step toward stealing their Infinity Stone-forged weapons. It could not be that difficult. He knew from experience it could not be done.

"Which targets were those?" he asked, glancing around, an admittedly weak attempt at delay which turned out not to land even slightly.

"The ones on their knees," the leader said flatly.

There was no reason for Loki to freeze. Not when he knew that the longer he remained speaking, the longer he would have to turn this situation into something advantageous to him. Not when he knew precisely how the bodies would appear, strewn across the floor and broken, if he were to fail again, as he would certainly fail again.

A voice from behind him, gentle, the only clear thing in that room: "I think we have enough, don't you?"

As code phrases went, it was not particularly subtle. As the one they'd used for mission after mission, it was perhaps the only thing that could have shaken Loki into action. He moved before he knew he was moving, reaching for one of the many magical weapons he carried. It hardly mattered which one, but somehow it seemed unsurprising that it became the Casket in his hands, radiating coldness through him, even as he swung it from side to side, freezing into statues all within the wake of its blast.

Behind him, back to his back, Barnes fired his weapon as well. Again, again, again, until none of the opposing force remained standing. The battle had raged for perhaps a few seconds; while a few of the Hydra agents had managed to get off a shot, not one of them had the reflexes of a supersoldier or a god (or, apparently, a sense of how to aim).

"Get them up. And get their cuffs off," Barnes said, taking an effortless control Loki might have resented, had he not felt suddenly so emptied. Without waiting to see if Loki would do as asked, Barnes reached for his earpiece--embedded in his earlobe, as was Loki's, and so well-crafted that they had yet to land upon a world where it could be detected--and said, "Romanov. Romanov, come in." Pause. "We've been made." Pause. Head tilt. "We have the weapons. About twenty. Going to need transport for some more people, too. Twenty, no, twenty-two of them." Pause. Whether he tilted his head, Loki could not have said, having once more tucked away the Casket in favor of busying himself with the freeing of bonds. "Copy." Pause. "Copy. We'll be on the--"

Gunfire from beyond the door at the far end of the room. Loki, crouched in front of the fifth Midgardian in the line, had no chance to respond. Barnes, did, firing off a shot, and then another.

"--we'll be on the roof. Should be a helipad up there. Probably not overgrown, they've been using it." Pause. "Copy. See you then."

Then Barnes came to take over Loki's former task, as Loki went to retrieve the weapons. Some merely had to be taken from where they lay on the ground, while others had to be removed from bloodied hands or thawed out of frozen claws. Each went into the same space where the Tesseract had once dwelled, where the Casket still did.

By the time Loki had finished, Barnes had as well. The rest of what happened was reminiscent of any number of past missions, so familiar it hardly required thought. Barnes took the front, Loki the rear, the hostages clustered between them. The journey to the roof took several hours, requiring that every room or hallway along the way be cleared in case of ambush. In the end, they broke into sunlight onto a roof that indeed contained a helipad. There they waited for a few hours longer, Barnes working his usual charms upon their rescuees, while Loki held to the side and melted, any thought of casting his own charms dismissed the moment he heard someone say, "Isn't that the guy who tried to take over New York?"

Eventually, a friendly aircraft descended, manned by the expected skeptical faces. The hostages were handed off; they were flown back to the Avengers Compound; the debriefing there lasted at least thrice as long as strictly necessary; and Loki was forced to give up all of the weaponry he'd confiscated rather than being allowed to keep a pair to half a dozen for his and Barnes' use.

When they were completely, finally finished, the spider leaned back in her chair and said, "Good work." Then, where she would ordinarily have told them what their next mission was to be, she added, "Take a few weeks off. You look like you need it. I'll be in touch."

*

"You're not skipping out on me, are you?"

Loki, caught on his way back down the ship's off-ramp, and having not planned for his absence to be noted before it was a _fait accompli_ , was startled into telling something close to the truth: "I hardly know."

"Okay." Barnes, who liked (in his own words) to give Loki enough rope to hang himself, seemed to wait. Waited some more. Then must have grown weary of that particular endeavor, or perhaps weary of squinting at Loki's face, because finally he said, "Is it because we slept together?"

"I hardly know," Loki said again, which was a lie and a truth and everything in between. One moment it was one thing. The next it was another. It was having slept with Barnes. It was what had happened with the hostages, when for a moment he might have been returned to the _Statesman_ minutes before the slaughter began. It was what had happened before either of those things, when there had been two boys, marked for death: brothers who looked not at all alike, one of them speaking reason to the other, who had refused to listen and would most likely never learn to. It was everything and it was nothing, and it was unbearable enough without being forced to bear it in Barnes' presence.

"Well, come back in for a minute. You're letting all the warm air in."

When they'd re-boarded the ship several hours ago, the first thing Barnes had done was set the environmental controls to a much chillier baseline than usual. Loki would ordinarily have taken this as a sign that Barnes had been just as uncomfortable in the heat and humidity as he, then needled him about it until he felt his point had been accomplished. Instead, he'd merely waited until Barnes had found his way to the engine room, and then had made his exit. Attempted to.

"Very well," he said, and followed Barnes back inside. Behind them, the ramp came back up and clunked into its place. Through the distance that seemed to be between himself and everything else, he said, "What was it you wanted?"

"Where do I even--Christ, Loki. What I don't want is whatever this is."

"I have no idea what you could mean."

"You don't, huh? Well, I'll tell you. It's this thing where we sleep together, and then you act like an asshole--"

"I certainly did not."

"We got made, and there was no way you didn't know it was a possibility! You blew me off and made sure we rushed in, when we should have taken a minute to come up with a plan. You know, the kind we usually make when we need one? And now you won't even talk to me--"

"We're speaking now."

"--Goddamn it, you asshole, _you know what I mean_ , and all I can think is that it's because you're mad that we slept together."

No amount of needling had ever had such an effect on Barnes before. They'd argued often enough, starting from the first time Loki had decided to see what it would take to disrupt Barnes' innate equilibrium, but this was the first time Loki had ever seen his face contorted into this particular shape, or heard his voice taking on a tone that sounded very near desperation.

"I am not angry we slept together," he managed, a maybe-truth somewhat more careful and more deliberate than the last he'd halfway told.

"Well, you must be something. This is the first time you've ever tried to walk out on me. If I hadn't gotten a hunch that, hey, maybe I should check on Loki, where would you be right now?"

"I hadn't progressed quite that far," Loki offered, another truth. "I'd have had to take an inventory of the available vehicles before deciding."

He didn't realize he'd meant Barnes to laugh at this until he didn't. "Look, if you're freaked out about what happened, I get it. We can pretend it didn't. It doesn't matter to me."

"I never once imagined it did," Loki said.

It had been immediately apparent what their coupling must have been to Barnes. Loki of all people knew how such a thing might occur. When you had free access to a thing, but because you were in the light, you never thought to avail yourself of it; yet when you were in the dark once more, you grasped for it, not because you wanted it so badly in your most secret heart, but because it was there. Later, when you were in the light again, or in an even deeper dark, you wondered what had possessed you to reach for it in the first place. It had been evident from the moment it ended, from the moment it began: Barnes had been in the dark, and Loki had been there.

"Then why are you being such a dick? I get that this mission was hard on both of us, but, Jesus. I didn't go through the last few weeks just to lose my best friend." (Though he would never be sure quite how, Loki managed not to toss the lighted match of 'But I thought the late odious Captain Rogers was your best friend' into the conversation.) "I shouldn't have let it go that far. That's on me. I just thought, the way you look at me sometimes...maybe it wasn't the best timing, but I thought it could be a good thing. And I, kind of, I needed--but, yeah. I got the message. Loud and clear. So if you could just stick around. Or, I don't know. I'm not going to try to keep you here if you really want to go. But could at least you give everything a few days to calm down before you make any stupid decisions?"

It was, very possibly, the most impassioned and stumbling speech Loki had ever heard Barnes give. He still managed to miss the latter part of it entirely, having latched onto one particular statement: "You thought it could be a good thing."

"Uh, yeah," Barnes said. "I kind of always thought you were, you know, interested. Figured we were taking our time to get there."

There seemed almost to be a hurt beneath the wryness, another unusual taste. Loki abruptly discovered a keen interest in a conversation that had, up until now, seemed to be occurring in a fog not very unlike the one he'd drifted through in the months following Thor's death. Everything seemed to have changed, the meaning behind Barnes' desperate demeanor shifting in a moment. "You thought I was interested in being your lover. And you would have welcomed this."

"Guess I got that one wrong, huh?" Now Barnes did laugh, far more bitterly than his usual.

There was a time, not long ago, when Loki would have rejoiced in the abrupt knowledge that someone both desired and was so uncertain of him. The Loki of years ago had delighted in keeping his lovers unsteady; to run hot and cold, make them work for his regard, only to discard them the moment managing their feelings became tedious. 

The Loki of the night before ached to bring out a dagger. The Loki of minutes ago yearned to flee. The Loki of the last three years, who'd risen from the ashes of Asgard only to witness it all burn again, the one who'd lost a brother and gained a crown, could suddenly think only of the moment a handsome, also-grieving stranger had once looked at him, and said, 'You're looking rough. Want to get out of here?'

Barnes had been certain of him, always. From that first moment. It was not even close to the first time in Loki's life he'd desperately wanted someone to be sure of him, but perhaps he'd never so greatly desired it at a moment when it was actually within his reach.

They'd been standing apart for the bulk of the conversation, Loki by the ramp, Barnes by the door. Now, Loki strode forward, quickly, before Barnes could object, and grabbed him by the chin, and kissed him. Fiercely, hungrily, whole-heartedly.

"Uh," Barnes said when their lips parted. "That's not really what I thought we were doing. But sure."

Loki ignored everything about this except the tone of slightly stunned joy that seemed to underlay the words. "I would have welcomed it as well," he said, a final truth that would only minutes ago have seemed too raw ever to be uttered, and kissed Barnes again.

*

Hours later, after an evening filled with Barnes-induced orgasms and quite a lot more necking than Loki had ever desired from any previous lover, Loki said, "Everything you might have been upset about, and the greatest was that I might not wish to bed you again."

"Sure," Barnes said. "If that's the spin you want to put on it, I guess. Couldn't have had anything to do with you deciding you'd rather run away than sit down and talk about things."

They were lying together in Barnes' bed, which was not really all that much larger than the bed they'd twice-shared during their mission. Loki had once more contrived to remain between Barnes and the wall, and had not been displeased with the warm slide of Barnes' skin against him in the aftermath of their ardor.

They continued to lay there comfortably, until Barnes said, "So, where do we want to go on our vacation? I know it's your turn to choose, but I was thinking maybe Space Vegas."

Ordinarily, Loki enjoyed few things more than interrogating Barnes about the meaning of Midgardian expressions, particularly concepts preceded by the word 'Space.' It was invariably hilarious, and often fascinating as well. Now, however, he found himself thinking about what had come into his mind when Barnes had asked the question, the last place Loki had ever imagined himself returning, and was able to manage only, "I shall think upon it."

"Okay," Barnes said. Silence descended for a minute, so much more comfortable than any recent quiet. "I missed you."

"I was right beside you all the while," said Loki, not about to admit how much of the past weeks he'd spent longing to have Barnes' usual aspect with him.

"Yeah, but still."

Loki looked at Barnes, really looked straight-on, as he had so rarely been able to without giving something away. What he gave away now, he didn't know, and found he hardly cared. "How have you really fared, these last few weeks?"

"Told you I'd make it," Barnes said. "Not really sure how I ended up doing better than you, though."

Loki, who knew a misdirection when he heard it, but had no desire to delve into the latter topic, decided not to pursue this subject further. At least not openly and right now. 

Barnes shifted against him a time or two more. His breathing began to even out. It was into this new, slumbering quiet that Loki said, "New Asgard, perhaps."

"What, really?" Barnes rolled over to look at him, no longer, it seemed, on his way down. "I don't think that counts as a vacation. Are you sure?"

Loki had never been to the place he was now king of. The closest he'd come had been on the battlefield, a mere and a vast half a world from here. That was where Thor had died, and half the universe with him. That was where Loki had been crowned, on one knee before Heimdall among the dust, unable to think anything other than that he didn't want this anymore, hadn't in quite some time; and where was Thor and why hadn't occurred to him that he ought to put a stop to this farce, just as Loki had put a stop to another, so few and so many years ago?

Sometimes, they still called him. Heimdall or the Valkyrie or both. They'd stopped asking when or if he intended to come home, and so it had been a while since he'd lied and said he was on the way right now, or next, or soon. It had been a while since he'd had to deflect, longer still since he'd raged, asked why it was so vital he be present when they all knew fucking off to have irrelevant adventures was precisely what Thor would have done in his place. Instead, they'd tell him about what was happening in that stupid little fishing village. Who had married whom. Whose blood feud was still continuing. Who had had yet another child, as if living next to Midgardians meant they were now obliged to breed like them. Who had been thought lost in a storm upon the sea, only to float in hale and whole the following day.

"I'm certain I wish to visit," Loki said. He wondered what dreams they each might have, lying together in some small hut where every breath was sure to reek of fish and salt and duty. "Beyond that, I hardly know."


End file.
